The last game you completed, and rating.

Just finished Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves.

Thought it was an exceptionally well made mix of tower defense type strategy and third person action for an indie game. Very rough around the edges, but well balanced, and strategically and tactically always interesting and decent enough at action to feel tense but fun when things go south and it all gets a bit seat of the pants.

7.5/10, or perhaps a bit more than that taking into account value for money.
 
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Seanspeed said:
You know you need to get Borderlands 2 now, right? Get the GOTY edition again, as its DLC is even better than in the first(with the Tiny Tina DLC being the best DLC I've ever played). In general, the game is better than the first in almost every way, except maybe the humor is a little more forced.

Anyways, game I just finished recently:

Dying Light

One of the best zombie games I've ever played.

The two open world areas are large enough, not too big, not too small, packed with enough meaningfully designed locations to keep things interesting whether exploring or on quests. They are of course also designed specifically to take advantage of the movement mechanics, which I'll get to soon. Each map has its own character(and not just visually), requiring somewhat different approaches to getting around. As an open world fan, I thought they did a great job here.

The game has a strong and fun loot element. Something I love as well. Whether picking up weapons or crafting items or medical items or money, there's usually always something useful to loot wherever you go, giving you incentive to explore, pick locks and risk looting bodies in swarms of zombies.

The movement mechanics are probably the highlight of the game. It really makes the game a joy to play. It's a mix of Assassin's Creed and Mirror's Edge and it's done so well. It feels good straight from the start, but it gets better and better the more you level up your Agility skill tree, giving you more finesse and a bunch of new moves. You eventually feel like you're a parkour god and it's incredibly satisfying.

Combat is decent. Melee weapons will make up the meat of your offensive tactics, which is nice because you have to get close up with your enemies for the most part. I only found guns useful in certain encounters/quests. You can use some pretty fun moves, though, like drop kicking, slide tackling, elbow rushing, etc too. Each have their own usefulness and where you hit enemies matters a whole lot. Human enemies could be a bit frustrating at times, as they are very agile for the most part, but otherwise, I thought combat was pretty good and quite tense at times. Individual regular zombies aren't much of a threat, but in groups, you definitely want to be careful. And then the game starts to throw some properly dangerous zombie types at you which you need to be very careful with. The game had me sweating on a regular basis, though every situation is fair and manageable if you play smart.

The night/day mechanic is obviously a big part of the game, but I found it was mostly avoidable apart from a few early missions that kind of force you to tackle nighttime just to teach you about it. Granted, I avoided it largely because I was totally chicken, because nighttime is hard and SCARY. You cant see very well at all and the zombies that come out at night are fast and absolutely ruthless. It's terrifying to be spotted by them and have them chase you til you can try and find somewhere safe. It's a ton of fun, but it'd be nice if the game forced you into it more so you cant chicken out of it for most of the game.

Graphics are quite nice as well outside the disgusting use of chromatic aberration.

All in all, this is a pretty amazing achievement for Techland. Not flawless, but it does so much well that I found any criticisms I had to be mostly able to be overlooked.

A well deserved 9/10.
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Good review and I have to second it as its a great game
 
Tomb Raider (2013).

Finished it with 100% collectables/upgrades in first play-through. Really fun game, has obviously taken some design cues from the Uncharted series, and I think it suffers a bit from it. I'd rather have had more jumpy climby tomb raidery puzzles and fewer shooting sections. I started to sigh a bit whenever I saw a series of waist-high walls ahead of me.

Very well made game, very fun, just not 'tomb raider' enough for my tastes.

9/10 as a game, 8/10 as a tomb raider game.
 
Contradiction

Gave this a go after watching Jesse Cox and Dodger playing though this.

The FMV is done well, the UI is easy to work around, the story is interesting and full of red herrings. The acting is great also. Fun times.

8/10 - Hope they do another.
 
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System Shock 2 + Infinite Mod (pre - 2.4 / can't remember what version exactly).

Far, far better than I thought it would be. A great effort by the modding team, which offers players so many more choices (9+/10).
 
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Back to the future Game 8/10 would have gave it a ten if it didnt have dodgey control movement at times and a few bugs here and there that stopped me progressing, witcher 3 before that 10/10 the base game and hearts of stone
 
The Witcher

Finally finished this rpg after a very long time lol. I bought this donkey years ago and got to ch3 but left it for some reason. Story is the biggest draw with this game for me...great story, meaningful choices, ending sets up the next game - fantastic. I also thought the graphics were actually excellent considering how old the game is and the engine it uses (NWN). Only slight let down is the combat can be a bit tetchy towards the end as you fight a lot of enemies and it can be a bit glitchy but i would still say combat is pretty good and well thought out (all the different styles and animations).

I would put this in the same mustplay rpg bracket along with other greats (Deus Ex, Planescape Torment, BG2, Vampire Masquerade:Bloodlines, Ultima 7)

8.8/10

CDprojeckt god bless them for saving the rpg.

just started witcher 2 combat is a bit tricky with controller (high sensitivty and lock on doesnt work as im used to in controller type games)
 
Goosebumps - Approx 5 hours playtime with some decent nostalgia from the books/series. Not as in depth as I would have liked with knowledge required but I suppose they wanted to cater for all players.

6/10 Not worth £14.99 however. I would pay up to £10 in hindsight.
 
The Last of Us Remastered

I played it before on the PS3 and beat it, so not a completely fresh playthrough apart from the Left Behind DLC I hadn't checked out before. Also went with the Hard difficulty and no listening mode(didn't do listening mode first time, either), which is important for a couple reasons I'll explain in a minute.

First off, the storytelling in this game is top notch. It's one thing Naughty Dog does well and it's never been done better than here, I dont think. Characters are very well presented - voice acting is superb, as is the dialogue and interactions between characters. It is very believable and not at all typical video game crap.

The Remastered version is also very good looking, considering it's not much more than an 1080p/60fps port of the original. The assets have held up very well and it fits right in with just about any next-gen game, with its last gen roots only poking through here and there. I spend a hell of a lot of time in the fairly powerful photomode just enjoying the scenery and taking screenshots, though a free cam would have really been nice. I think I have about 800 screenshots in all.

Gameplay is actually really good, I think. The gunplay itself isn't anything but standard 3rd person stuff, and it intentionally gimps your aim unless you upgrade it, which makes for a frustrating experience at times early on. I can see what they were going for, but it could be a bit annoying at times. That said, the game plays at 60fps now, which makes it a lot more bearable. On PS3, it could be downright infuriating with its sub-30fps framerate added on. So anyways, what makes the gameplay fun and interesting is not necessarily the combat alone, it's the addition of stealth elements and a few other tools at your disposal that can be found or crafted(in real time, no pausing to craft), along with mostly good encounter design and the ability to kind of choose how you want to approach things, usually resulting in a fair bit of improvising when your plans dont work out, where things get fairly tense at times. The game does lack enemy variety, though, something I think is an undervalued aspect of games.

Other things that keep the general gameplay interesting is the progression and exploration. You always have a lot of incentive to scour the areas for every little scrap you can find. There are crafting materials, ammo, guns, upgrades and upgrade materials, notes that fill in backstory(to good effect) and some general collectables. This is where the difficulty mode comes in. The biggest difference between Normal and Hard is the amount of loot the game provides you. On Normal, between enemy drops and what you find lying around, you will pretty much always be well stocked and prepared. On Hard, the game really turns into something more akin to a proper survival horror game as the game *drastically* reduces what it gives you, making every little shot count and every situation important to think over to minimize what you expend. Also makes you appreciate just about every little thing you find that might help you. Progression itself is handled well as you'll have to make tough choices on what you upgrade and gives you incentive to make sure you're finding all the upgrade materials you can. I dont think it is possible to maximize either your character or your all your weapons.

All these things combine to make a game that I found infinitely more enjoyable than the Uncharted games. On Hard difficulty at least, I found it's a great mix of 3rd person shooter, stealth and survival horror and some actual depth to the gameplay, whereas Uncharted was just generic 3rd person combat and that's pretty much it gameplay-wise, no worthwhile exploration, no progression system, no actual depth whatsoever. It's just presentation over gameplay, whereas TLOU has a great balance of both, I think.

As for the Left Behind DLC, it was a nice addition. Not especially long, and the gameplay itself wasn't really anything new, but a touching little story that filled in some of the story quite nicely. Glad I didn't pay $15 or $20 or whatever it was when it first came out, though.

I'd have given the PS3 version a 9/10, but I think I can give the Remastered PS4 version a good 9.5/10. 60fps and the addition of Photomode really make for a better, more enjoyable game.
 
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